Monday, January 11, 2016

Engagements and Child Brides

Sorry everyone, I’ve been busy using up all my writing
energy on another project. But I’m back with an overly long make-up post!

Engagements! During the holidays (which I’m defining as a week
before thanksgiving to a week after New Year’s) I counted just shy of 20
engagements among my Facebook friends. I don’t have that many Facebook friends!
Honestly I think I might have zero single Facebook friends now. And it’s not just
friends from my direct peer group, it’s people that I once babysat (more on
that).

The thing about Mormons is that get married young and they
get married fast. For each of my friends that got engaged over that period, I
kept track (as much as was possible) of how long they had been dating before
any questions were popped. Then I took an average. Four months. FOUR FREAKING
MONTHS! The longest was 11 months and the shortest was 3 weeks.

It feels a little short no? But relatively how short is it?
After doing some exhaustive research (aka doing one google search and clicking
on the first link) I found that the national average of time a couple is together
before engagement to be about three years. Compare that to the Mormon average
of four months (okay my number was not from a large or representative sample,
but just go with it) and its almost 10 times as long! And I’m sure the
difference would be even greater if we included the time from engagement to
marriage.

All this made me think, why do Mormons get engaged so
fast? I think it boils down to a combination of a factors:

No sex before marriage, duh

Hiding behind the shield of spirituality. Some people seem to think as long as they pray about it, then they are free to pull the trigger. Everyone is just so optimistic about marriage and thinks if they are a good Mormon they are immune to divorce

Self-propelling Culture. Marriage is so valued in our culture, plus everyone in your peer group is getting married fast. It becomes your reference point

Dating more intensely. It seems like when Mormons start dating, they spend probably more time than average with their significant other. Dating is less about fun and more about figuring out if the other person is suitable spouse (hence the first date questions about how many kids you want)

Our relatively homogenous society. We are generally marrying fellow Mormons so the process of learning and reconciling with each other’s views on religion, values, family expectations, gender roles is relatively easy

I actually went to a wedding over the holidays and it was
too perfect not to share.

First the bride, who I shall refer to as “Child Bride”, was
someone I use to babysit. Our families are super close and go way back. She’s
18 and pretty and sweet. Her family has basically bred her to be a Mormon
wife/mother.

She had a boyfriend off and on through high school and just
sent him on a mission in September. Meanwhile she left for BYU-Idaho. In her
first month of her first semester of her first year at college she goes on her
first date with a (25 year old) Returned Missionary. But plot twist! She
doesn’t get engaged to that guy. But during that date, the (25 year old) RM’s
roommate, we’ll call him the “27yrold”, starts calling her. Allegedly he calls
and calls before she calls him back. Boom, three weeks later Child Bride and
27yrold are engaged.

At the reception (held the night before the wedding), she
told us they bonded over both recently getting out of bad “long” term relationships
(even though he had dated his ex-gf only 5 months and she didn’t technically
get out of her relationship with her missionary until she Dear John-ed him
AFTER she got engaged, minor details). Also she said one night they talked for
2 whole hours straight and after that she knew he was the one. That was
revelatory to me. Personally I have gotten up to 1 hour of conversation with a
girl a few times, maybe 1.5 hours tops, but I’ve never hit that legendary 2
hour mark. It makes sense why I’m still single. At least now I know what to
shoot for.

So with that rock solid foundation they decided to take the
plunge. It was basically was an arranged marriage, except it wasn’t usual wise
parents arranging the marriage, it was teenager.

I honestly felt bad for being there, like I was an accessory
to a crime or something. I kept thinking that the wedding wasn’t going to
actually happen. Not because either of them seemed nervous or seemed to have
cold feet (definitely not the case with them), just because it just didn’t seem
like it should have been allowed to happen. Any moment I figured someone would
bust down the doors and stop everything.

That didn’t happen though. Instead a bunch of weird crap
happened. Despite Child Bride’s dad calling the 27yrold’s dad, bishop, and
mission president to make sure the dude was legit, I was not sold. He seemed
super dramatic. At the reception, as Child Bride sat in the middle of the dance
floor, he sang James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” in a disturbing falsetto like
right in her face (please look up the lyrics and join me in puzzlement).
Immediately following that, his whole family surround her in a circle and sang
a song (which I did not recognize) at her. There was a lot of this going on:

His mom stood up and talked about how he has been a hand
full and that it’s crazy that it seems like just yesterday he was staying up
all night with his friends playing video games. Then she salvages it by saying
he is so driven and knows what he wants, only to end with saying he needs to decide
what he is majoring in at BYU-Idaho. Next his dad took his turn and said that
he was going to read a letter that he wrote to 27yrold when he was teenager,
but that he felt was still applicable. He proceeds to read a letter that lists
out all of 27yrold’s faults and weaknesses in TMI detail, and then he just sits
down.

It was one wtf moment after another. But they got married.
It’s done.

At one point Child Bride’s dad told us that his parents only
knew each other for a week before getting married and that he only dated his
wife for 2 weeks before putting a ring on it. Child Bride endured a whole 3
weeks of dating. I guess that’s progress.

1 comment:

Oh my gosh, I am dying. That last gif. So good. The image of him singing "you're beautiful" to her in a bad falsetto is the stuff of nightmares. Everything after that sounds like something that would make me wish a sinkhole would open underneath me.